In recent years, a trend towards electronic trading has become well-established, causing one major exchange after another to replace or at least supplement the traditional open outcry, where a trade is done face to face, with automated electronic systems which automatically match bids and offers. While the motivation behind using electronic trading may vary from market to market, greater efficiency and volume are some of the considerations.
Electronic trading is generally based on a host exchange, one or more computer networks and client devices. An electronic exchange provides a matching process between buyers and sellers. Some well known electronic exchanges include Eurex, London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (“LIFFE”), Euronext, Chicago Mercantile Exchange (“CME”), Chicago Board of Trade (“CBOT”), and Xetra. Buyers and sellers, collectively referred to as traders, are typically connected to one or more electronic exchanges by way of communication links. Traders submit buy and sell orders to the electronic exchange over the communication links. They also obtain price information and other fill information from the exchange.
An electronic exchange can list any number of tradeable objects. Often times, traders will trade simultaneously in more than one tradeable object, and they may trade simultaneously tradeable objects that are listed at more than one exchange. Ordinarily, each tradeable object has its own electronic market, and therefore, its own separate stream of market information. Therefore, in these instances, the traders will generally receive more than one stream of market information such that each stream of market information attempts to characterize a given tradeable object. In addition to receiving market information from exchanges, a trader might subscribe to news feeds to receive real-time data that may assist the trader in making their trading decisions.
As used herein, the term “tradeable object” refers to anything that can be traded with a quantity and price. For example, tradeable objects may include, but are not limited to, all types of traded financial products, such as, for example, stocks, options, bonds, futures, currency, and warrants, as well as funds, derivatives, and collections of the foregoing. Moreover, tradeable objects may include all types of commodities, such as grains, energy, and metals. Also, a tradeable object may be “real,” such as products that are listed by an exchange for trading, or “synthetic,” such as a combination of real products that is created by the trader. A tradeable object could be actually a combination of other tradeable objects, such as a class of tradeable objects.
Generally, when a trader submits an order to a host exchange, the host checks the conditions associated with the order, such as price and quantity, and prioritizes the order with other orders of the same price. When the order conditions are satisfied in the market, a trade occurs and trade information is then relayed in some fashion to one or more client devices. In fact, as indicated earlier, a host exchange typically publishes a data feed to the client devices so that the traders can have access to the most current market update information.
Also, as trader's orders get filled, a trader typically wishes to view fill data related to his trades during a trading day, including his net position, and profit and loss (“P/L”) information that is determined based on the received fills. The existing applications for displaying P/L related information and a trader's net position are often limited in terms of their utility. It is often cumbersome for a trader to set them up, since they often require a trader to set up different filters to be used for calculating P/L and other risk related values, such as net positions being held by a trader in relation to a plurality of tradeable objects. The existing applications are also limiting in terms of how much information can be displayed in relation to one window based on the set up filters, and multiple windows may be required to view risk data corresponding to different account numbers, different tradeable objects, or different currencies, for example. As the number of trader's accounts or tradeable objects being traded by a trader increases, setting of all desirable filters for each window and viewing all windows that display trader's risk data on a computer screen may be difficult or even impossible. The burden of configuring such windows and viewing the displayed information further multiplies when it is a risk manager administrator rather than an individual trader who is trying to monitor and manage multiple accounts and/or multiple traders.
It is still desirable for electronic trading applications to offer tools that can assist a trader in trading in an electronic trading environment, help making profitable trades in a speedy and accurate manner, while allowing the trader to conveniently configure and control trader-related information such as P/L and net position.